...Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed...
Patrick Henry (1736-1799) US Founding Father

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Joel Meyerowitz - Bio - He was born in 1938 in New York City and graduated from Ohio State in 1959 with a degree in painting and medical illustration. He began photographing in 1962. He follows a street style photography describing his influences as from Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, yet he uses a large-format 8x10 camera. He shot with the equipment (thus styling) of landscape photographers, yet with street, intimate subjects. He was instrumental, along with Eggleston, in promoting the acceptance of color photography in the art community. He has a masterful control of color, and has published many books of his prints. Included in these is his first book 'Cape Light' that is considered a classic on the subject matter. Notably among his recent work is his images documenting the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. He was the singular photographer granted unrestricted access to the area surrounding ground zero immediately after the attack.

Most. Quite a word, especially in light of the cluelessness going on in the White House, the criminal activities being uncovered in confirmation hearings and the bribery-blackmail-payola legislation being spewed in Congress, but 'most' is appropriate here.

From an Ohio blogger who tends to view things from a dark corner of his mind we have:

America is living through the final manifestation of every Republican idea Republicans have ever wanted to implement. They got it all - not one item on the Republican wish list has gone undone. Not one.

And it is a spectacular, total failure.

Tens of thousands of people lose their jobs every single week as a result of Republican ideology. Every 401(k) in the country is gutted because of Republican policy. Every bank in the country is teetering on collapse because of Republican philosophy. Every homeowner in the country has lost tens of thousands of dollars in value in their largest investment because of Republican dogma. Millions of homeowners have lost their home because of Republican lack of oversight.

We are living the dream Republicans have dreamt of for decades. Only one problem - it’s a nightmare.

Every word a delight to those who refuse to learn history or to understand current events and refuse to look in the mirror. It scares them. Their paltry faith in the beliefs they call their own, which they have combed from who knows where, is so fragile that they must blame everything on their opponents, both real and imagined.

Their wrath and righteous indignation spews from their keyboards, as if they stand in our rooms and offices, to create a windmill tilting clarion call for justice.

Well, I have news for the disenfranchised who for eight years called our president names to humiliate him and to make themselves feel important. You're still disenfranchised.

The world didn't care then and doesn't care now to listen to ranting made only to alleviate the ranter. Even the conservative member of politics knows that our Republican form of government is one of compromise.

Our side of the aisle knows full well that Republicans in Congress represented us poorly as they acted like they owned their jobs, could spend our money freely and many Republicans knowing that, just stayed home this last election and the one before it.

The policies that grew the greatest prosperity in modern times came from luminaries in our political system, not gutter snipers that belly ached that even in success, such as almost full employment, that it came on the backs of those that didn't work.

This, then, is the "total failure" of Republican policy. That now greed is being punished and businesses' suffer from policies pushed, unfortunately, by both parties is not a total failure of Republican policy, it is the result of governmental folly that it knows enough of business to tell business how to do business. Governments know as much of social justice as a watch knows about time. Both are merely mechanisms and when they are used to go beyond their mechanical abilities, they cause failure.

So, rant on about your imagined nightmares from a mind not fully occupied. Politics is a passionate endeavor, but a hard nosed one as well. Rants of bravado may have a place on the field of battle, the sports arena and the political rally/protest, but it is generally a nuisance to those trying to do the business of governing.

Solis Senate Session Postponed in Wake of Husband's Tax Lien RevelationsA Senate committee today abruptly canceled a session to consider President Obama's nomination of Rep. Hilda Solis to be labor secretary in the wake of a report saying that her husband yesterday paid about $6,400 to settle tax liens against his business -- including liens that had been outstanding for as long as 16 years.The report, by USA Today, came just before the Senate's Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee was slated to meet to consider Solis's nomination, which had been delayed by questions over her role on the board of the pro-labor organization American Rights at Work. A source said that committee members did not learn about the tax issue until today.

I think we should all pitch in to buy and send a copy of Turbo Tax to the White House. It couldn't hurt.

The chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the bailout funds told the Senate Banking committee Thursday that Treasury in 2008 paid $254 billion and received assets worth about $176 billion.

The figures were reached by extrapolating the results of a study of 10 government transactions.

They haven't cleaned up the last mess and right now 16 senators are closeted behind closed doors, where voters can't see or hear what they're doing, deciding how to spend the next trillion dollars. And because it is so important and needs so much consideration and thought, they want to pass the 'stimulus' package by tonight. Fast thinkers, they. Faster talkers.

You may not be able to save your job or your house, but you'll be saving Mother Earth! At least that is what you are being told.

Drilling here and drilling now will create more jobs that any stimulus plan coming of of the District of Calamity. We won't see any new jobs in our energy sector unless we count the paper jobs of the green movement.

Will different forms of energy that pollute less be created? Yep, you bet, but will government create them? Nope, you can bet on that too. To continue to destroy petroleum based energy at this point is to help destroy our economy.

Via Gateway Pundit: Barack Obama's Interior Secretary Ken Salazar cancelled oil and gas leases on 77 parcels of land in Utah. This will most likely end the possibility of any drilling and hope for any income or new jobs in the area.Rather than develop domestic resources of energy here at home, the Obama Administration just cancelled development of oil and gas reserves in Utah.

The problems with "new energy" are momentous and will not be solved in the near future.

If Obama wants to create real change, he could stop the government from being hijacked by enviro-mental wack job groups as a start to get our country moving again.

On the other hand, maybe Obama is beholding to the groups that started this hysteria in the first place for his election. That would be more likely.

The work never stops. The workers never grumble because the money is great, they just keep hammering and never ask any questions. They build stairs to nowhere. The put in doors that open to a neck breaking drop. There is no master plan outside of never stop building. Money doesn't matter. Guilt builds this house. Guilt from people never known, but the guilt of others drives a structure costing huge amounts of money to build a structure that is utterly useless except to assuage the guilt and be a monument to stupidity that others can gawk at.

The useless stairs might have a simple explanation; the stairs were likely a part of the original house that Mrs. Winchester bought, and when she started adding on to the home, she covered up the stairs. Whether it was accidentally or on purpose, Mrs. Winchester usually covered up her mistakes by just continuing to build around them. Because she had no master plan for the house, her architectural ideas didn't always work out. Since she had no deadline for completion, she'd either tear down the mistake or cover it up with something else.Tall towers that look good, to some, but have no use other than to delight those that would never see the mess hidden by brick-a-brack and other eye candy..Rooms that went on and on, some which a visitor might not know how to get out of, while others seemed to have no purpose..Huge rooms with echoes of grandness which unfortunately others would never see.

The Winchester House, built ceaselessly by money others made, but expended for guilt, is the perfect example of government spending that few really understand, never think that they will bear the cost of and often only benefits those that work in the echoing halls as mere bureaucrats, legislative carpenters, and seldom helps those it is purported to be built for..Obama is just a new chapter in the age old fairy tale that government is 'change' that will help ordinary citizens. This change is just selfishness by those practicing it with other people's money.

Congress today passed a bill expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, allocating an additional $32.8 billion in funding for the program over the next four and a half years. President Barack Obama plans to sign the bill into law in a White House ceremony later this afternoon....The measure, which passed the House by a vote of 290-135, including 40 Republicans supporting it, calls for a 62-cent increase in the federal tax on cigarettes, bringing the total tax to $1 per pack.

As with most addictions, like blue dress babies in the Oval Office, Obama could just not wait to get his fix. And I am not talking about smoking in the boys room even though I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that boy could hot box a butt in one drag.

Obama's five-day rule: Broken againYet one of Obama's campaign promises -- the "Sunlight Before Signing" pledge -- was that he would not sign any non-emergency bills without offering the public five days to review and comment on the legislation.Just tell the children that the addictions of others will pay for them. Isn't that like the drug dealer on the corner who justifies his trade by saying that the people need it and he's just filling a need?. Now there's a message we should all give our kids. What's next, government pimping to stop global warming?

Does that make Obama the 'sunlight' messiah or the main man, the pusher?

Paula Nowakowski

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The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it. - P. J. O'Rourke

"What an irony that a society confronted with plastic bags filled with the remains of aborted babies should be more concerned about the problem of recycling the plastic"... - Winifred Egan